(April 17, 2014)

Spencer Dew chosen to attend Wabash Institute Workshop

SHREVEPORT, LA — Dr. Spencer Dew, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Mattie Allen Broyles Inaugural Year Research Chair, has been selected for the Wabash Institute Workshop for Pre-Tenure Religion Faculty at Colleges and Universities.

Dr. Dew is one of 14 qualified undergraduate professors who have been selected for this program. The Workshop consists of three multi-day sessions over the span of several months in which participants learn strategies for effective teaching, course design and assessment, teaching in one's institutional context, dealing with diversities in the classroom, and issues of tenure preparation. The goal of the Workshop is to provide opportunities for participants to develop teaching skills and to explore and share teaching resources, strategies, and elements of course design.

"I hope this will make me a stronger teacher," said Dew. "I expect to hear a lot of stories from people in different schools. This school has unique challenges, and I hope to learn to design better courses and offer better classes for our students."

An accomplished author, he recently celebrated the publication of Here is How it Happens, his second fictional piece. Songs of Insurgency, a collection of short stories, was published in 2008. Since 2005, Dew has been a regular reviewer for Rain Taxi Review of Books and decomP.

After receiving a BA in religious studies, Dew completed graduate study at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He also participated in summer programs at the Naropa Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He joined Centenary during the fall 2012 semester.